Seeing if I can stick to the whole blog to Rethink book chapter theme thing going, this week’s blog is going to be about Shallow Holes! This means to widely explore and proof test concepts in the early stages.
For the brand identity project, it was quite nice to be helping with a team. As a student, most of the time, we were the ones responsible for our projects in class and we mimicked the real world with instructors as creative directors and classmates as peer review. Last week, we had a few rounds of fast and loose ideation (100 or more!). I’m quite glad we have been used to ideating up to 100 and I like having others to build ideas with, check work along the way, and also use what we created to combine ideas!
In the second week, we got digging! I got to see our creative director in action, combing through the ideas and astutely picking the strong ones and themes! He picked the top ideas, and then we got digitizing! I got to work on refining two of my sketches/ideas. As the next client presentation was later in the week, I was curious to see how we were going to present our shallow holes.
What I wasn’t expecting was how fast we got to creating the simple executions of the ideas (eg. mockup a poster etc.). At first, I was used to getting a week or more in class, but I understood that this was still the early stages so to make sure we can share the ideas early with the client! I also was surprised at how we pulled it together in short order and excited to see how we put together the top ideas. I can see how it’s good to have visual examples so someone can speak to what they like and don’t like!
Another great digging exercise is all the coffee meetings! I’m getting to reach out to as many Rethinkers as I can and within many different areas. While I’m getting great stories and tips (share soon), I also ask who they recommend I talk to next as it helps me build out more contacts!
For the other projects, I’m learning to managing my time between the other projects and meetings. We are assigned to different teams so I’m trying to work back from deadlines to make sure I have extra time and trying to set small or large blocks of time to get certain tasks done. I’ve set times here and there to work on the brand identity guidelines document, I sat in a photoshoot meeting, and I helped out create type lockups for some posters!
In a nutshell, it’s exciting to dig with others together to validate we’ve found the treasure! Now I’m ready to get even more dirtier as I can’t wait to dig deeper!
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